Ten years ago I planned to write a book about the death of Princess Diana. I wrote a 55-page proposal for the book. And what happened? The publishers, all of them in the U.K. informed me that they could not offer me publication because they could not protect me, and because of the book I […]

Visitors to Paris have adopted this Statue of Liberty Flame as a memorial to Diana. It stands at the exit of the tunnel in which she had lost her life.(cc Marilyn Z. Tomlins)

Ten years ago I planned to write a book about the death of Princess Diana.

I wrote a 55-page proposal for the book.

And what happened?

The publishers, all of them in the U.K. informed me that they could not offer me publication because they could not protect me, and because of the book I would run the risk of being assassinated.

Who were the people who were going to assassinate me?

The answer is MI6.

One publisher told me that he did not want a Salman Rushdie situation on his hands. Another publisher told me that he could not protect me, or himself, or his young family, from MI6.

So, I did not write the book. Instead I wrote other books.

Here follows the beginning of my book proposal:

What journalists call the ‘silly season’ was ending.

The month of August was hot and sunny; from the first day of the month the temperature in Paris was in the deep 30s Celsius rising to 37 degrees on the third and penultimate weekend of the month. Over the next 48 hours the heat broke with the mercury descending to the low 20s. Parisians back from their annual month-long holiday put on cardigans or jackets for the first time in some time.

‘Silly season’ did indeed define that August.

Apart from the August 5 crash of a Korean Air Boeing 747 at Guam International Airport when 228 people died, and the August 14 sentencing to death of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City Bomber, the news was light-hearted – light-hearted but interesting and amusing.

The news was that Diana had a new lover.

He was not just any run-of-the mill man. He was Emad El-Din Mohamed Abdel Moneim Al Fayed – Dodi – eldest son of one of Britain’s wealthiest men, billionaire Mohamed Abdel Moneim Al Fayed, and of Samira Kashoggi, sister of billionaire arms dealer and businessman, Adnan Kashoggi.